A new poll released by employment website Workopolis finds a new trend with Canadian workers is toward less commitment to their jobs.
Just over half (51 per cent) reported they’d been in the same job for less than two years, while 30 per cent had been in one job for more than four years.
Compare that to the 1990-1999 results, where 16 per cent reported having the same job for less than two years and 60 per cent had been in the same job more than four years.
The survey also found that nearly half (48 per cent) of respondents reported having three or more separate career paths.
The polls were conducted with samples of between 1,000 and 5,000 Workopolis users, but no margin of error accompanied the results as they weren’t truly random samples of Canadians.
This new trend also can’t be assigned to a specific generation either because the responders’ ages weren’t recorded.
However, this pattern of “job hopping” sounds like quite a few people I know, who work at a job for a year or less and move on to something else.
Most of these people I know cite being “bored” as their reason for moving on.
Many moons ago, in my long-lost youth, I went through some of those jobs because I didn’t like the work, the environment or because something better came along. And that’s fair enough — why should someone stick it out at a place they don’t fit in when there are so many workplaces out there?
Commitment to a job is something of a catch-22 in an age when bosses cover the whole spectrum from the old-school, work hard, suck-it-up, stick-it-out mentality to wanting to foster their employees’ quest to find the elusive “perfect job.”
The problem with working toward the “perfect job” is that there will always be aspects of a job we don’t like. This is not intended to be depressing, but instead to be realistic. It’s simply not realistic to expect everything to align with exactly what you want at all times. Even when you’re your own boss, you face challenges and encounter surprises — sometimes unpleasant.
You never know what your potential employer could think when looking over your résumé, and that goes for everyone: those with spotty work histories of a thousand short-lived jobs and those with a thousand years in one position at one company.
Maybe the employer thinks the worker with various jobs is adaptable and seeks new experiences, and can bring a fresh perspective to the workplace.
Or maybe that the person is unreliable, unwilling to deal with conflict and flaky.
Maybe the employer thinks the person with a long-term job is a complete stick in the mud and is just a cog in a machine that doesn’t want new challenges.
In my line of work, it’s almost expected of new reporters to cut their teeth in a few communities. Much of the early movement in media is lateral, from one media outlet to another in the same position, but with this kind of “job hopping,” you get so much exposure to new ideas, new people, new experiences, and new environments that you are forced to develop a variety of skills quickly and under pressure.
Still, that’s not to say you can’t advance and increase your skill set at a job you have had for four years or more. It all comes down to who you work for, where you work and where you’re at in your career. Goals can change as new experiences enter, and there’s really no telling how we can benefit from being open to those experiences.
